According to the urban myth, the eskimos have hundreds of words for snow. But meteorologists, especially British weather forecasters, have just as many words for rain. Take this typical forecast for example:

TODAY: Showers will continue in the north and west, but become more lighter and more isolated as the night progresses. Remaining dry elsewhere with clear spells and light winds.

TOMORROW: Largely dry and bright with sunny spells, the best of the sunshine in the south. A few light showers are likely for Scotland and Northern Ireland. Warm with light winds.

Many people just want to know will it rain today and should I take a brolly? Deciphering the weasel words above can be frustrating, in case you find this confusing, here’s a quick (and incomplete) translation into plain words [1].

a long history of fine facial foliage from Errol Flynn to Tom Selleck, Henry Wellcome to Freddie Mercury, Charlie Chaplin to Lemmy from Motörhead. How can you compete with distinguished facial hair like that?

Then I looked around me and thought, what the heck, that’s not stopping anyone else. So with a few colleagues we got together and created the University of Mo-chester, CSMCR team. So far we’ve raised over £1000 for prostate and testicular cancer and you can still sponsor us. There’s a group photo of us below – you can’t actually see my moustache in that picture because it is blonde. Honest guv’.

There’s an interesting back story to Movember, told here by its Aussie founder, Adam Garone:

Movember isn’t just about raising money, it’s about raising awareness too. If you’re a bloke, have you felt your balls lately, for testicular cancer (obviously)? Do you know about prostate cancer? With a few caveats [1], Movember is having a generally positive effect on human health [2] – and its a lot of fun too!

Long jumper for Snohomish. Creative Commons licensed picture by by Philo Nordlund on Flickr

If Science were an Olympic sport, which events would scientists excel at?

During the Beijing Olympics in 2008, I wondered what Olympic activities scientists would be good at, with a list of events. This satirical post was kindly re-published [1] by the learned American Physical Society (thanks guys!) in their newsletter, though some of the proposed events look a little dated now.

Meanwhile Team Science [2] also play their part in supporting the Olympics, through sports science, drug testing and other services. Some are sparring for their bouts of impact factor boxing but may need a soothing ego massage afterwards to recover from the particularly painful peer-reviewed punches. Others are limbering up for the long jump to conclusions an event at which some scientists (and many policitians) are strong medal contenders. There are lots of other events proposed for the future too, some of them quite controversial [3,4,5], they might need genetically enhanced security guards, with superhuman abilities (sponsored by G4S)?

Readers of this blog will probably have much better ideas than the rather ropey suggestions I cobbled together. If that’s you, please post them below in the comments section or tweet them with the hashtag #OlympicScience.

So is word play really the key to technological success? Successful technologies often encourage word play, but word play does not make technology successful. Correlation does not imply causation and the examples above are very anecdotal.

Still, word play is fun and probably helps brands without doing them any harm [2]. Raspberry Pi is a particularly ripe brand for punning, are there any other #TechnoWordPlay examples?

The Parthenon at night by Konstantinos Dafalias, creative commons licensed picture available on Flickr. If you look carefully, you can see the inscription “Elgin woz ‘ere, 1801” where the Marbles were stolen from.

Here is a recipe and serving suggestion for delicious Parthenon Marbles cake, originally developed by Thomas Bruce, better known as Lord Elgin.

Recipe

Buy a return ticket from the UK to Athens, Greece

On arrival in Athens, find the most spectacular and beautiful cake you can

Remove and vandalise the tastiest looking parts of the cake

If anyone asks what you are doing, tell them you are an “ambassador”

When you have finished vandalising, return to the UK with your souvenir cakes, leaving the leftovers in Greece.

Serving suggestion

These cakes are traditionally enjoyed in London. They are often decorated with large servings of patronising propaganda and a sprinkling of insults against the Greek nation. See for example Elgin Marbles: Relocation Debate on wikipedia and the Parthenon Marbles at the British Museum website.

Some people will tell you these cakes are many decades past their best before date. Ignore them if you can, while you enjoy the cakes at a safe distance from any Greeks who will legitimately demand that you return them to Athens immediately.

This is a controversial recipe as the ownership of the ingredients is keenly contested [1,2,3,4,5]. Consequently, it may not be possible to enjoy these cakes in the UK for much longer so enjoy them while you can.

Some leading football scientists say Mancini’s Blue Moon hypothesis has been proven beyond all doubt; money does buy you trophies. Other scientists say that is it too early to tell, these results are inconclusive and more research is needed. Professor Ferguson insists that other factors besides money are significant in winning trophies.

Experimentalists will resume their research when the Large Football Collider (LFC) is switched back on in August 2012 after its annual summer shutdown. Is Mancini’s hypothesis proven or not? Tune in next season …

References

The Premier League Research Council (PLRC) funds research into basic and applied football science in collaboration with the Mansour Research Council and many others. These football science councils have a larger fund than all the other traditional scientific research councils combined (EPSRC, BBSRC, NERC, MRC, STFC and PPARC etc).

But beware! Many self-confessed nerds may actually be dorks, dweebs or geeks. It’s a grey area out there in the Venn of Nerdery, not quite as clear cut as the diagram above. To be sure of treating nerds right, you’ll need to be nice to dorks, dweebs and geeks too! See video for details…

Stephen Fry’s Planet Word is an entertaining romp through the English language. It provides a timely reminder as to why people don’t always say what they mean, see the episode on uses and abuses of language for some entertaining examples. Talking of the divergence between what people say and what they actually mean, reminded me of this handy British / American English translation key (which comes via the good people at OpenHelix).

What the British say

What the British mean

What others understand

I hear what you say

I disagree and do not want to discuss it further

They accept my point of view

With the greatest respect

I think you are an idiot

They are listening to me

That’s not bad

That’s good

That’s poor

That is a very brave proposal

You are insane

They think I have courage

Quite good

A bit disappointing

Quite good

I would suggest…

Do it or be prepared to justify yourself

Think about the idea, but do what you like

Oh incidentally/ by the way

The primary purpose of our discussion is…

That is not very important

I was a bit disappointed that

I am annoyed that

It doesn’t really matter

Very interesting

That is clearly nonsense

They are impressed

I’ll bear it in mind

I’ve forgotten it already

They will probably do it

I’m sure its my fault

It’s your fault

Why do they think it was their fault?

You must come for dinner

It’s not an invitation, I’m just being polite

I will get an invitation soon

I almost agree

I don’t agree at all

They are not far from agreement

I only have a few minor comments

Please re-write completely

They have found a few typos

Could we consider some other options

I don’t like your idea

They have not yet decided

All human languages have the facility for the kinds of little white lies shown above, not just English. Life would be quite different if people always said precisely what they meant, and the English would have less fun confusing Americans with their ludicrous limey language.

Science, is a big word that gets used and abused with reckless abandon. Virtually any discipline can award itself extra kudos by adding the magic S word at the end. For example, which sounds weightier, sports studies or sports science?

This phenomenon has been noticed many times before, for example, the philosopher John Searle once remarked that:

“Science has become something of an honorific term, and all sorts of disciplines that are quite unlike physics or chemistry are eager to call themselves ‘sciences‘.

A good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that anything that calls itself a science probably isn’t.” –see [1,2]

So let’s make a list. Starting with thingsthat probably aren’t a Science because they call themselves one:

So are maths, physics, chemistry, biology etc real sciences™ too? Using Searle’s definition, it’s difficult to say. To avoid confusion, it might be a good idea to use a subjects non-scientific original name (“biology” rather than “life science”) that way, we know (paradoxically) they are real sciences. Probably.

Fuller quotation: “Science has become something of an honorific term, and all sorts of disciplines that are quite unlike physics and chemistry are eager to call themselves ‘sciences’. A good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that anything that calls itself ‘science’ probably isn’t — for example, Christian science, or military science, and possibly even cognitive science or social science. The word ‘science’ tends to suggest a lot of researchers in white coats waving test tubes and peering at instruments. To many minds it suggests an arcane infallibility. The rival picture I want to suggest is this: what we are all aiming at in intellectual disciplines is knowledge and understanding. There is only knowledge and understanding, whether we have it in mathematics, literary criticism, history, physics, or philosophy. Some disciplines are more systematic than others, and we might want to reserve the word ‘science’ for them.”

Unless you’re a scientist, that is, in which case you might be working. If that’s you, this one goes out to all you committed high-calibre, driven scientists [1,2,3] who are spending this Sunday working at the laboratory bench. The amusing little ditty below is written by biologists Michael Elowitz and Uri Alon, and performed here by Uri Alon.

I kissed my wife and kissed farewell
I must go down to run my gel
I’m going to spend another Sunday at the lab

My wife said “Uri, you’ve got to promise,
you love me more than doing Science”
I said “Honey, can we discuss this another day?”
I’m going to spend another Sunday at the lab

My mum said “Son, don’t waste your life,
go home and spend time with the wife
you must have heard this from your father
why can’t you be more like your brother?
No son of mine spends Sundays at the lab.”

My dad said “Son, you need a shrink”
The shrink said son “you need a drink”
Those Rorschach spots reminded me of blots
He said “Oh God, you obviously have an obsessive compulsion
to spend all your Sundays at the lab”

My wife she left me
My mum disowned me
The shrink pretends he doesn’t know me
Because I can’t be myself
Without some buffer on the shelf

So if you need me, you can phone me at the lab
I’m going to spend another Sunday
I’m going to spend another Sunday
I’m going to spend another Sunday at the lab